Startup pitch: Everbooked brings Big Data to Airbnb rental management

Everbooked is a demand-based pricing service for owners of Airbnb short-term rentals.

The Oakland, Calif.-based startup says it is one of the first companies to bring “big data” to the vacation rental industry.

Everbooked helps Airbnb hosts increase their revenue, giving them the same tools that hotels and airlines have had for years. It looks at local demand factors and uses them to optimize rates — raising prices on high demand days, and lowering them on low-demand days.

Pricing is done automatically and around-the-clock, so hosts can ‘set it and forget it’, while increasing monthly revenue by as much as 40%.

A Q&A with CEO David Ordal:

Tell us how you founded the company, why and what made you decide to jump in and create the business.

We offer a suite of pricing and market intelligence services to help Airbnb hosts price their listings perfectly and generate up to 40% more revenue.

Our CEO, David Ordal, has been involved in the VR industry for many years. He knew that airlines and hotels have been using sophisticated yield management systems since the 80’s, and realized that vacation rental managers had no way to take advantage of the same techniques.

Everbooked is levelling the playing field between hotels and vacation rentals, and bringing the same yield management techniques to individual owners and managers.

Size of the team, names of founders, management roles and key personnel?

We think that this market is huge. According to the most recent large-scale study, the PhoCusWright US Vacation Rentals 2009-2014, vacation rentals are a $ 23B industry in the US and $ 85B worldwide. One in five lodging dollars is spent on vacation rentals, and the market is growing 4-5X more quickly than hotels.

Competition?

There are a number of competitors doing similar things, but we have the most comprehensive and unique set of tools in the marketplace.

BeyondPricing and PriceLabs focus only on the demand-based pricing piece, while SmartHost focuses on understanding and researching your competition.

Airbnb themselves have taken some steps toward demand-based pricing with their ‘price tips’ features, but it’s not automated.

We’re the only provider than provides all the necessary tools in one.

Revenue model and strategy for profitability?

To use our nightly pricing service, we charge 1% of your gross revenue from Airbnb (above and beyond Airbnb’s fees). We collect our fee on a monthly basis.

What problem does the business solve?

Everbooked’s is all about helping Airbnb hosts understand their local market and generate up to 40% more revenue by pricing their listings competitively. To that end, we offer two core tools:

• An automated nightly pricing service, which you can ‘set and forget’. It will automatically monitor your listing, area supply & demand, local events, and much more. Every night, it goes in and updates your Airbnb listing(s) with the latest prices.

• A first-of-its-kind ‘comps tool’ for Airbnb hosts. You can enter your listing and it will automatically research your local area and pull together a set of listings comparable to your own. You can then see how you stack up against your neighbors.

How did the initial idea evolve and were there changes/any pivots along the way in the early stages?

We started about a year ago, and first focused only on the nightly pricing tool. We quickly realized that hosts weren’t just having trouble pricing to demand… they were having trouble figuring out what to charge, period. That led us to build our comp tool, and integrate that with our nightly pricing.

Why should people or companies use the business?

One simple reason: you’ll make more money with your Airbnb listing. If you use our service, you can make up to 40% more revenue by simply capturing more bookings at higher prices than you would otherwise.

What is the strategy for raising awareness and the customer/user acquisition (apart from PR)?

We’ve had good success so far with word-of-mouth referrals, SEO, and even traditional good old-fashioned advertising.

Where do you see the company in three years time and what specific challenges do you anticipate having to overcome?

We’d like to expand in two ways: first, focus outside the US. Vacation rentals are a $ 23B industry in the US, but an $ 85B industry worldwide, and so there’s a lot of ground to cover. Second, we’d like to work on partnerships with other players in the vacation rental industry.

What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that it requires a startup like yours to help it out?

We don’t think anything is ‘wrong’ with it – there’s simply an opportunity for things to be better, and more efficient. We hope to help vacation rentals gain an ever-broader share of overall lodging dollars.

What other technology company (in or outside of travel) would you consider yourselves most closely aligned to in terms of culture and style… and why?

I think we would probably identify with early 2000’s Google: we’re trying to make information visible in ways that it’s not otherwise, and we share the (perhaps idealistic) ‘do no evil’ mantra.

Which company would be the best fit to buy your startup?

To be honest, we haven’t really thought about it. Other than our friends and family round, we’re bootstrapped, and are really focused on growing a sizeable, sustainable company.

Describe your startup in three words?

Price Your Airbnb Perfectly. That’s four, but ‘your’ is a pronoun so we’re going to pretend it doesn’t count.

Everbooked has created a Vine to show it’s concept:

Tnooz view:

“This is a competitive space. (See the Tnooz profile of rival Beyond Pricing, for instance.)

But Everbooked looks like it is executing well. We’re eager to see what it gets up to next.”

Everbooked is a demand-based pricing service for owners of Airbnb short-term rentals. The Oakland, Calif.-based startup says it is one of the first companies to bring “big data” to the vacation rental industry. Everbooked helps Airbnb hosts increase their revenue, giving them the same tools that hotels...